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80It's cheap thrills all the way, served up with the kind of situational purity that only Carpenter seems to care for these days. It's that simple and that much fun.
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80Rife with silliness, such as the flashbacks within flashbacks of characters who were not with one another at the time, and occasional unintentional laughs -- but it's also a good, raucous kick in the behind, which is literally all it aspires to be
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75A brawny space opera, transplanting the conventions of Western, cop and martial arts films to the Red Planet.
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63Carpenter writes his own scripts -- here with past collaborator Larry Sulkis -- and their "Ghosts" screenplay lacks the density, character and humor of a Hollywood genre classic.
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60It might be nice if Ghosts of Mars had more to offer than snappy repartee and shameless gore, or if it could borrow a little narrative tension from its Alien Chain Saw forebears.
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50For those so inclined, it's nice to see the girl and the gangsta -- not the gunslinger -- save the day.
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Borderline-incoherent.
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42A redundancy, and a bore. The characters are harrowingly unsympathetic, the action sequences are by-the-numbers, and Carpenter's usual saving grace -- his sense of humor -- is nowhere in evidence.
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40Bad enough that the plot is shopworn, but the tough-gal talk is unintentionally hilarious, and the complicated narrative structure is annoying and pointless.
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40Written, directed, and edited with the offhand shoddiness of a day worker thinking about his evening beer.
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40Carpenter's heart doesn't seem to be in this lackluster space adventure set in 2176. What's more, his stars -- Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube -- don't exactly energize the proceedings.
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38While this cheesy, heavy-metal melange of horror, space hooey and cowboy shoot-'em-ups isn't exactly dull, it isn't anything to write home about either.
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38It starts as enjoyable B-movie pulp, degenerates to camp, then turns into laughable lunacy.
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30Like a zombie picture directed by one of the undead.
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30A turgid recycling of Mr. Carpenter's remake of "The Thing."
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25Carpenter pulls out all the action-adventure stops, but he and coscripter Larry Sulkis forgot to write dialogue the audience could listen to without howling in disbelief.
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25A horror/sci-fi/action mishmash that aims to be the kind of brainless timekiller once used to round out the bottom of a double bill at the drive-in.
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25I have an idea for a Mars movie. When our first astronauts step onto the Red Planet, they discover that Martians not only exist but that they've hired Johnnie Cochran to represent them in a massive defamation suit against American filmmakers.
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25A deep disappointment to fans of sci-fi and the once great John Carpenter.
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25A tired and dispiriting affair that takes forever to get going.
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25Slides instantly into the realm of the forgettable.
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It's not confusing, it's just slow. Very slow. Glacial.
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20So wretched that it practically defies description.
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20It keeps you off balance, all right, but not enough to obscure the sad fact that Ghosts of Mars is a muddled, derivative disaster straight on through.
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20This deliberately pre-'90s slice of rock 'n' roll-tinged sci-fi horror, decorated with anything but the latest in special effects, seems particularly grungy and marginal.
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20Schlocky, sluggish shoot-'em-up.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 15
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Mixed: 2 out of 15
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Negative: 8 out of 15
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